


Fireworks

by NoelleAngelFyre



Series: Fire and Gunpowder [11]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014), The Flash - All Media Types
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Exploring New Bodies, F/M, Metahuman Transformation, New Abilities/Powers, crazy love, dysfunctional family relationships, family violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-24
Updated: 2016-11-24
Packaged: 2018-09-01 21:12:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8638225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoelleAngelFyre/pseuds/NoelleAngelFyre
Summary: "Together, baby, we're gonna make fireworks."  The future is looking bright.  Perhaps a little too bright.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I'm bringing "Fire and Gunpowder" to a close with this final chapter, which brings us to the actual timeline in Season 1. I look forward to seeing you all in the follow-up series. A big shout-out to AuburnAutumn, whose wonderful reviews breathed new life into this story. Thank you, and good night! :)

In retrospect, she supposes this isn’t a complete surprise. Her father is an arrogant man. Psychologists would likely consider him a narcissist. There are many things narcissists don’t care for, and chief among them is having control taken and given to someone else. Her father has never liked someone else being in control. He’s never liked _her_ being in control.

Well, there are few ways more effective to take back control than with a gun.

“Be kind.” She whispers. Her gaze is unafraid, because while she is terrified of the gun in his hands—not necessarily of death, not of the way it will feel when the bullet rips into her flesh and leaves her bleeding out on the ground, but of the cold awareness that this morning was the last time she’ll ever be with her lover—she will never give him that satisfaction. “Aim for my heart. I think there might be a couple pieces you haven’t broken.”

He is kind. It’s the kindest he’s ever been to her.

Oddly enough, he doesn’t stay and watch her die. It tells her this was as meaningful as putting a down a troublesome dog: not worth the effort and time to watch the light die from her eyes. He fires the gun, he puts a bullet in her heart, and he walks away. It’s a calm and calculated execution.

He misses the way she doesn’t stay down on the ground. He misses the absence of blood pooling around her lifeless form. He doesn’t see the way she struggles to her hands and knees, and neither does anyone else. This is an abandoned place, a pitiful spit of downtown where only drug addicts come for a fix and the desperate homeless come for a bit of shelter. No one will call the cops at the sound of a gunshot. No one is going to peek out their window and see her, on the ground. She wonders if anyone can even hear her scream.

Except she can’t scream.

The pain is unlike anything she’s felt before: a splintering of bone, deep within the cavern of her chest where a bullet is both dissolving and sparking fire. White-hot flames, licking muscle and flesh alike, igniting her blood into an inferno the likes of which she doubts even the most imaginative minds can conceive. Her skin is splitting apart, the seams not unraveling but cracking apart under a heat that’s too much, too much! She is a clay pot left too long in the kiln. She is wood smoldering far too long in the fire pit. She screams, but there’s only fire crackling in her throat and no sound breaks the cold night air.

It’s too much. It’s too much. If she’s dying, then let there be a God in heaven to have mercy on her and end this now. If she’s not dying…then He is a cruel God. Crueler than she ever imagined.

The inferno rages mercilessly. Her body is too frail, too weak, too brittle, to contain it all. It burns and consumes ceaselessly, and she is only left to scream silently with eyes imploring the heavens to have pity. Desperate fingers claw at her chest, perhaps to extract a bullet that’s long-since embedded into her smoldering flesh, or perhaps because she can think of no other way to make it stop.

The fire burns and burns. Hours, minutes, days, weeks—who knows? Her body can’t handle it. She knows her body can’t handle it. She’s going to die. She’s going to…she’s going…she’s…she’s…

She’s going to explode.

The sky blazes a hellish red across her eyes. In her ears, she finally hears an agonized scream erupt from her throat. And then there’s only fire. Fire, around her, inside her. Fire, everywhere.

***

“…wait. Wait, look there. I think her fingers just moved.”

“What? Where?”

“There, see? Oh! And her eyelids…I think she’s waking up.”

“Oh, bloody hell. There is a God.”

Is there? She’s seen no evidence of it. A hand, ice-cold to the touch, skims across her brow; a voice, presumably attached to the hand, sighs heavily. “Still burning hot. Perhaps another ice pack…?”

“No, no, don’t you even think about it!” That voice… _Mama?_ “She screamed and shrieked like she was being murdered when you put that wretched thing on her!”

“Madame, we must bring down her fever.” She knows the other voice…the doctor. Her friend, her companion and confidant. What is he…why are the two of them here…? “If we don’t, the girl is likely to explode!”

 _…haven’t I already?_ Her throat burns, and is coated with ash. She coughs, and there’s fire again. Tears prick her eyes and slide down one cheek. It stings—no, burns. It burns! _Oh God, make it stop!!_

“Dearest girl, calm yourself—”

“Oh, my sweet little honey pot!!” Mama’s there, just like she always is, and runs gentle fingers to wipe the tears away. The remnants still burn, but this time it’s bearable and doesn’t fill her with the desire to rip her face off. “Oh, darling, it’s alright. My poor baby girl…who did this?”

“I…” fingers fumble against her chest, as if the motion will communicate what words can’t. That’s when she feels the thin cotton of a hospital gown. And beneath that, skin. Skin, undamaged and smooth. Skin that has never felt a bullet rip through its foundations and leave behind damning evidence.

She yanks at the fabric until it yields, eyes desperate to confirm what her brain isn’t willing to yet believe. But it’s there—or rather, _not_ there. Her skin is taut and smooth and perfect. Impossible.

So…what is _this_? What is Mama talking about…?

“My dear girl,” the doctor says, stepping forward; he handles her as though she’s a spooked animal, “can you remember anything? Some homeless man found you in that miserable swamp downtown, naked as a newborn! He thought you were dead, until you started mumbling this and that. Couldn’t make heads or tails of it, he said.”

She remembers none of that. She remembers what came before: when the impossible unleashed havoc inside her body and fire danced across her eyes.

“Stop interrogating her.” Mama is saying, while Stazia slowly stumbles off the bed and staggers across a floor that stings bare feet with its chill. “The poor darling was probably had by some deranged monstrosity who threw her out with the trash, and you’re beating her upside the brain with all these questions!”

“I am attempting to discern facts, my good Madam!”

“I’ll give you some _discernment_ , you fluff-faced old badger!!”

“Now, see _here_ —!”

Their bickering dulls to background noise, to slurred echoes in her ears. She barely even feels the cold floor anymore. She sees the mirror, and the mirror shows her a new reflection. This creature has hair the likes of which can’t possibly be natural: sunrise-gold streaked shamelessly with platinum-white and—impossibly, improbably—copper-red. Its skin is so smooth, flawless as a babe from the mother’s womb, yet already marred by tears that have burned their memory into flesh. And eyes…those _eyes_. No creature in existence possesses eyes like this.

She lifts a hand and presses it to cold glass. The woman in the mirror does the same. The glass is so cold, and then it’s warm. And then it’s gone. Her fingers rest against air, and there are only liquid remnants at her bare feet in place of broken fragments.

Fire. There was fire.

***

It’s some ungodly hour of the morning when a light down the hall breaks into dreamless sleep and briefly disorients him. He requires a good five minutes of blinking and gathering his bearings before any semblance of awareness is really his to claim, and then another three minutes gingerly testing limbs which were overextended today. And the day prior, come to think of it. Two days, passed in solitude and boredom, only held appeal for so long. At first, the peace and quiet was soothing. Then it was annoying. And then, most prominently, he felt concern. The latter only came to pass when Stazia’s shift ended at seven and she never walked through the door. No phone call, no discrete method of telling him where she was and when she’d be home. Nothing. The first three hours were unbearable. The rest threatened his sanity.

Now, it’s the middle of the night, and there’s someone in Stazia’s apartment. He doesn’t fully trust his powers when they’re still unstable, but there’s a rather handsome clay vase lying on the coffee table. It’ll do nicely.

He keeps his movements inaudible, working his way around the floorboards previously determined to make noise and keeping out of the light. It’s easy enough to fall back into these habits. Granted, he’s reduced to using a decorative piece of furniture in place of a gun for his weapon of choice, but anything can do enough damage—when in the right hands and used the right way.

The light grows brighter as he closes proximity. It burns the eyes a bit, but he stays focused. Distractions, in any form, are not an option right now. He has a secret to protect and his lover’s privacy to defend.

The bathroom door is open wide. Whoever is here doesn’t care about getting caught. And, come to think of it…he doesn’t recall hearing the door open. A window, perhaps? Maybe, but they’d have to shimmy up a drain pipe and work the window with one hand. Seems a bit extra effort, all to break into a place with very little worth stealing.

He pauses, mid-step, and draws in a slow breath. Something’s burned, or burning.

“You might not want to come too close, baby.” Stazia’s voice—because she always knows when he’s there, and the relief at hearing her alive and not dead in a gutter is too overwhelming for him to feel immediate surprise—precedes his slow rounding of the corner. She further manages to do the impossible: render him unmoved by the sight of her naked body, standing in the room’s center, when the shock of seeing such vibrant colors streak her previously monotonous hair is eclipsed only (and barely) by the sight of flames, bright and glorious in their intensity, dance where the fingers of her right hands ought to be.

He misses her initial statement under the spiral of confusion ransacking his head, and only the reflection staring at him in the mirror—a pair of eyes, purple to shame the most vivacious shade of amethyst and flecked gold to match the flames—jars him back to reality, just in time to hear the calm continuation of, “You might get hurt.”

A moment of silence follows, then he lets the vase fall heavy to carpeted floors and leans against the door jam. “I think you should start at the beginning.”

***

The scalding heat of her skin proves too much to handle. Against her own better judgment, she slips into an ice-cold bath after two days of suffering. Much to her pleased surprise, her body doesn’t dissolve into a mist, though she does flood the bathroom with steam and transform the small space into a sauna. She hears Kyle open the door a few minute thereafter, and it’s not until he stands directly beside her tub that she can even see him through the fog.

“Glad some of us can enjoy the luxury.” He says dryly.

With a playful tilt to her head, she cocks an eyebrow. “It’s been a few months.” She replies. “One of the most important elements to scientific research is consistent follow-up.”

He opens his mouth, but misses her hand until she’s flicked a palm-full of water at him. An instinctual flinch follows, then nothing. The water beads more slowly off his skin than it would someone more…well, human. But unlike last time, he doesn’t keel over like a man on his deathbed. It’s a rather impressive improvement.

“Care to join me?” she offers; it’s half an honest invitation, but also a joking comment made in the (regrettably) sincere hope he has enough common sense to refuse.

Thankfully, he does.

“I’ll pass.” He settles carefully on the bath ledge, hands loose in his lap. In the thick mist, the finer details of her naked form are lost, but she can feel his gaze tracing old paths and it pools familiar heat in her belly. “Aren’t you pushing it a little too fast?”

“No.” she lazily extends one leg, mindful to not spill water over the edge, and cradles her nape with one arm. “I’ve already realized what it took you six months to figure out.”

His glare is without genuine heat, but not annoyance. “Do tell.”

“ _This_ ,” she gestures idly down her front, “is a rebirth. We possess the ability to think and speak, reason and think twice and all that, but we have to learn motor functions the same as toddlers do. How to walk. How to run. How to use these strange, weird, uncanny things called _bodies_.”

“I know that tone, Stazia.” Kyle says, leaning forward a bit. “Need I remind you, playing mad scientist with yourself could, shall we say, not end so well?”

She smirks, baring a glimpse of teeth under dark lips. “Oh, but think of all the excitement, Kyle. The thrill. The rush. The explosions.”

“You’re going to blow up your apartment.”

“ _We_ are.” She corrects, and now she’s showcasing a full white-toothed grin. He’s gazing rather intently at her lips, and her mind silently counts the seconds until he’ll forgo caution and throw himself into wicked temptation, headfirst and reckless. “Fire and gunpowder, baby. And together, we’re gonna make _fireworks_.”


End file.
